Please, I Cannot Compile This Spreadsheet, For I Am A Smooth-Skinned Goatherd

a modern Pastoral

Make me a spreadsheet for work

• I cannot do this thing…my cheeks are of such a flush from the Alpenglow

• I have a red cotton shawl in which I keep my simple cheese, from my village

• My beautiful village, which I love, up in the mountains

• Please, my goats…

Coffee time at work

• No coffee…let us kneel beside the coldest spring and drink as the goats do…the goats are my responsibility, given to me by the King

• People gossip so, in Poschiavo…I prefer the company of the goats, and for this even the goose-boy Torvald laughs at me

• The Queen’s beautiful daughter has been missing for many years…the princess’ horse was called Tachëbrun, and could speak

• My goats have ascended to the highest peak in the Pitz Palu, my attitude towards nature is Humble

Now is a meeting

• No…now is a small potato, baking in the ashes

• All times are now to a goat

• Im Dörfli

• I must rub goats’ milk onto my tender skin, for my beauty

You are late!!

• I have my slippers, my shawl-cheese, my tunic, my goat-staff…my flock...the hills for my goats to browse and sluice…the songs of the nightingale and the lark…

• You are built to envious show!! Grudged at and grudging, lanternless tale-teller! I throw my pebbles at you, from my sling, with my noble arm, to gaze upon my noble arm!

• My true master is Dionysus, whose wand drips with honey and whose grapes bring god-madness

• I do not tend to pigs…such work is for the pig-boy, whose skin is washed with pigs’ milk and cannot compare in either lustre or brilliance to mine…

Here is an email for you to answer

• My hair is fragrant with fennel and grape leaves

• I must pipe a while, I must play on my pipes to the delight of my goats and their sisters the hill-dryads

• the free mountain air has filled my face with beauty…many kings are desirous of my simple outdoor beauty

• I sleep in a field of flax and carry a long iron fork, for toasting bread….the fir trees will protect me from your fits of email

• the brown one with white spots I call Bränli

• Begone, landlord…never again will I dwell at court